BLACK JANUARY, part 2 : MUNICH

I don’t have a lot of intellectual consideration for Spielberg, or rather, I don’t consider him as an intellectual. I find his stances sentimental, sometimes corny, and his messages unexciting, sometimes simplistic. A humanist, yes, a dreamweaver, yes, a storyteller, yes. But an “auteur” ? No, to me Spielberg is merely what I was told Walt Disney was when I was a child – which far from deserving scorn is actually quite an achievement and a unique performance in itself, but then, doesn’t make him the kind of Elder I’d ask for advice on the great debates and philosophical issues of our time : that’s simply neither the place he’s earned himself nor the function he professes when he produces his flicks under the label “Dreamworks”.

So what is “Munich” ? A nightmare treated like a dream, and the first case of its kind to my knowledge in Spielberg’s career if you admit with me that “Schindler’s list” was, in spite of its theme, a fairy tale like all the others. Which means that it’s not a nightmare treated nightmarishly : not an anti-Zionist blame on Israel’s policies, not an ignorant misinterpretation of history, not a demonstration of the evils of vicious cycles of violence. No. Just a dream. For children. A plot with no other consistency than its own dramatic logic and tricks. A lavish, sophisticated narration skillfully staged, compelling to watch and avoiding Hollywood hyperbolic vulgarity thanks to the refreshingly tasteful sobriety in acting from the cast. A reality expurgated from its most adventurous aspects, where the Mossad has committed no mistake, the traumas don’t really traumatize, the burdens weigh without necessity and all the characters but the victims have the time to have their say and to show (off ?) their humanity.

I don’t want my money back. I liked the movie. But I want my nightmare back. I want the question of the vengeance asked. Its legitimacy, its significance, its affinities with war, its affinities with justice, its discrepancies with justice. I want to know why, as casually mentioned in one cue (while I would have made the entire script revolve around this), Golda Meir chose to treat Black September, a Palestinian paramilitary organization, like a country and not like a criminal, like Hitler’s Germany and not like Elie Wiesel’s Eichmann. I want to be shown the religious paradox of a David eager to prove his personal might coupled to the cathartic, symbolic dimensions in this fantasy of “the wrath of God” (!). I want to be explained the differences between Israel behaving above the human law and the USA violating the decisions of the UN. I want to know whether the crosscut sex/slaughter means that Avner is aroused by violence and perverted by his experience, or on the opposite so disturbed and traumatized that he’ll never be able to make love normally again.

In a word, I’m afraid I want another “Munich” than Spielberg’s.

Unlike a lot of his detractors, I don’t blame the filmmaker for having chosen a slippery topic. On the opposite. Unrestricted kudos for that. PC must die, and PC rages about Israel. I mean that PC consists in praising instead of respecting, and that’s what you do when you unduly demonize or worship Israel or Palestine – disgracefully insisting that one of the two sides must be “good” and the other one “evil”, when all I see is two nations fighting for one land and having each perfectly legitimate reasons to call it its own. There is no “good” and “evil” in a tragedy. There is the tragedy.

I want a “Munich” produced by “Tragedyworks”.